Italy Realized

I had an amazing opportunity to spend a week in Italy, and I really enjoyed it. I learned so much in one week that it was difficult to take it all in. In class, I enjoyed learning about the shift from medieval to Renaissance. From my own experiences, I was most impacted by what I learned about the relationship a tourist has with a place compared to the relationship locals have with a place.

The class focused on the paradigm shift from medieval to Renaissance. At first, I thought that medieval societies didn’t have the means to achieve what was done during the Renaissance. It would have been more difficult for information to spread before the Gutenberg press, but the way people perceived the world dramatically changed during the Renaissance. This shift in perspective made room for rapid advancements in the arts and in science. For example, people used to consider the senses very differently than we do today. Before the Renaissance, “hearing was passive, discontinuous, and disconnected and took place over time. Seeing was active, continuous, and connected, and took place immediately” (Nelson, p. 155). People thought of senses in an emotional context; today, people think of senses scientifically.

In addition to what I learned in class, I learned from my experience as a tourist. Tourists are almost always at a little bit of a disadvantage. They know the places that are the most famous, but that doesn’t mean that they know the best places to visit. I probably missed seeing some really special places that aren’t famous enough to be known by tourists. I really enjoyed the scavenger hunt because I got to visit Scala Contarini del Bovolo, which is a beautiful staircase that isn’t as well known as some of the other buildings in Venice, like Basilica di San Marco or the clock tower. The tower isn’t easy to find, but it’s worth visiting. I had a lot of fun searching for and finally finding the tower. I didn’t get to visit many places like Scala Contarini del Bovolo because I only had a week in Italy. Hopefully I’ll get to go back someday and try to find some other lesser known places in Venice.

I got to explore a lot as a tourist. One of my favorite things to do in Venice was to wander around without any real destination. I found some pretty interesting places, like a Venetian post office and an old church the class didn’t visit. I discovered that the best view, in my opinion, is from the middle of a bridge overlooking a canal. It’s so different than anything I can ever see at home. The water is so blue it looks fake, and the buildings are gorgeous.

“Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time” (Foucault, p. 26). Whenever I took a second to pause in Venice and look around, it felt like the city had been frozen in time. Everything has been there for so long that it has accumulated history. Venetians have contributed to the heterotopia by protecting their history. If something has been recently repaired or built, it was done with the intention of preserving the integrity of Venice’s history.

Because Venice feels so permanent, it was easy to forget how short my visit was while I was there. As a tourist, I wasn’t anywhere in Italy long enough to learn about and adapt to the little quirks that every place has. At Purdue, I know that on my walk to class from my apartment the sidewalk on one side of the road doesn’t get salted when it’s icy. I’ve been able to adjust to that this year. I experienced the Acqua Alta few times in Venice, but I was never prepared for it. I never remembered that I needed to check the tide when I was checking the weather in the morning to decide what to wear. I would have liked to spend enough time in Venice to recognize the quirks that I need to prepare for.

Living in a place creates a sense of permanence. People care about the place they live in a way that a visitor can’t. I’ll never really fall in love with any part of Italy unless I’m able to visit for a longer period of time, or if I visit multiple times. I made amazing memories, saw unforgettable art, and had a ton of fun. But I didn’t have enough time to truly care about the place I was in. At home I have a certain amount of pride about where I live; I want to improve it and leave a mark. As a tourist, it’s best not to leave any mark. Tourists aren’t in one place long enough to have a lasting positive influence. Normally, the marks tourists leave are detrimental, such as writing on walls of historic buildings, so it’s best if visitors leave no mark at all.

Tourists don’t have a sense of permanence. It’s fun to be transient every once in a while because it creates opportunities to explore and fosters independence, but I like to be able to come back to a place of security and predictability. I like having a schedule and knowing the people I see everyday. I like having a place that’s mine.

I loved this experience, and it was ridiculously fun. I never thought I would have the opportunity to visit Italy. I wish I could have spent more time there to get a better feel for the cities and the culture, but hopefully I’ll get a chance to go back someday.

Sources

Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, 1986, pp. 22–27. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/464648.

Nelson, Robert. Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Scavenger Hunt

The last day in Venice was dedicated to a scavenger hunt. The night before the scavenger hunt on the train from Milan to Venice we formed teams and received our riddles. I was on a team with Sam and Scott, and our riddle was:

I may be slow, but I climb high,

Out of my shell, into the sky.

Take a picture with the tower

That symbolized a family’s power.

At first we thought the riddle was referring to a turtle, but Professor Felluga told us that was wrong on the train. The only other slow animal with a shell that we could think of was a snail. Once we all had reliable internet connection on San Servolo, we met to try to solve the riddle. I started by looking up famous families and towers in Venice, which got me nowhere. There are too many famous families with towers in the city to narrow it down. Sam googled “snails in Venice” and immediately found Scala Contarini del Bovolo, a tower with a spiral staircase named after a snail belonging to the Contarini family.

The next day we met up to go find the tower. The tower is located on San Marco, where we had already spent a lot of time, so we were pretty familiar with the area at first. As we got closer to the tower, things started to get more unfamiliar and we started to encounter standing water. We didn’t really plan for the Acqua Alta when we set out, so we didn’t have waterproof shoes or plastic shoe covers. We tried taking close to ten different routes to get to the tower, but none of them were elevated enough to be dry once we got close to the canal.

Locals kept trying to sell us plastic shoe covers. It was obvious that we were tourists trying to get through the Acqua Alta, but we didn’t want to spend the money on shoe covers if we could wait until the tide went down and then visit the tower. We decided to wander around for a few hours, get lunch, and then come back when the tide was lower.

We wandered around San Marco for a while, and we found a really neat church, a theater, and what I think was a courthouse. Then we moved on to Academia. From Academia, we took a vaporetto east of San Marco to the part of Venice that Napoleon changed to make it more French. We ate lunch there and explored the parks. It was nice to see some trees and wander around. We found a statue with a moat around it and turtles living in the moat. Then we found a playground, so we stopped and played there for a while.

Eventually we started to wind our way back toward the tower. When we finally got there, the tower was closed because it was reserved for an event. We didn’t get a chance to ask the locals setting up for the event about the tower because as soon as we got there, another tour group followed in behind us. The three of us weren’t enough to disrupt the workers, but a large group of elderly tourists was. Once the other group of tourists came in, the courtyard was suddenly very crowded and very loud. They had a tour guide who was trying to tell them the history of the tower, and while the crew was trying to set up something around the fence, the tour group was constantly in the way. The people setting up seemed a little irritated by the number of tourists, so we didn’t feel very comfortable asking them questions about the event that was happening or about the tower. We took a quick selfie and left as soon as we realized we wouldn’t be able to get in to see the tower.

I didn’t realize it, but our group was probably exactly like that other tour group the whole week. We were probably always in someone’s way whenever we were all together, even when we were trying our best to stay out of the way. And we were definitely loud. A group of thirty is too large to blend in and not disrupt other people. Although locals are used to tourists, a large group is probably still pretty overwhelming. When large tour groups come through Purdue and take up the entire sidewalk, I get kind of irritated even though I know that the students touring are potential Boilermakers. I understand why the locals setting up the event were frustrated with the tourists.

The tower itself was really pretty. It’s made out of light pink stone with white columns and arches running all the way up the staircase. The tower is compared to a snail because the arches that go all the way up the staircase look like a snail’s shell. One perk of seeing it when we did is that there were flowers winding up the tower for the event that was happening later that night, so the tower looked really nice from a distance. I wish we could have gone in and seen the view from the top, but we weren’t prepared for the Acqua Alta and we didn’t know it would close early that day. It was still really cool to see the Scala Contarini del Bovolo, and I’m really glad this was our scavenger hunt assignment.

Day 7

Friday, March 16, 2018

Today was the scavenger hunt. I was on a team with Sam and Scott, and we got to San Marco early to finish our assignment. We didn’t plan for the Acqua Alta, so we weren’t prepared for all the routes to the tower to be blocked by water. We decided to explore until the tide went down and then come back later so we didn’t have to buy shoe covers. We started on San Marco, then moved on to Accademia, and finally ended up at the parks that Napoleon built before we headed back to find our tower. We stumbled across a lot of really interesting parts of Venice that we wouldn’t have noticed if we had found the tower right away and then met up with another group.

Public Records

While we were in San Marco, we found Teatro La Fenice, the Venetian opera house. We went into the lobby, but the tickets to see the theater were expensive, so we didn’t go in. Then we found an empty courtyard that led to the post office, public records, and a Corte dei Conti, which means court of audit. Basically, we found a courthouse in Venice. It was interesting to see something so familiar in such a different setting. The building was really old and really pretty, with a courtyard and a well in the middle. It’s easy to forget in a city so full of tourists that the people who live there permanently need access to the same records and services that we all access at home.

Courtyard of  Corte dei Conti

After we left the courthouse, we went to Chiesa di Santo Stefano, an old church with amazing architecture and some of the original art still in it. No pictures are allowed in the church, which was surprisingly nice. I’ve spent the whole week taking pictures and sometimes I didn’t fully appreciate everything I was seeing because I was too worried about taking a picture of it.

After the church, we crossed the bridge to Accademia. We had already seen most of what we saw today from our previous trips to Accademia, so we didn’t stay there very long. We saw the courtyard of the Guggenheim museum, but we didn’t go in because the tickets were expensive. We also saw Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute close up instead of from a vaporetto. After seeing the Basilica, we decided to go to a part of Venice we hadn’t visited yet, so we took a vaporetto east of San Marco to the part of Venice Napoleon remodeled during his short reign.

There is a very distinct difference between Napoleon’s Venice and the rest of Venice. The streets are wider and straighter, and there are parks. This part of the city was clearly planned much better than the rest of the city, but it doesn’t have as much charm and history because of it. Napoleon erased part of Venice’s history when he tore down and rebuilt this part of Venice. “The more historically self-conscious the writer of any form of historiography, the more the question of the social system and the law that sustains it, the authority of this law and its justification, and threats to the law occupy his attention” (White, p. 13).  Just as he did by building the Correr, Napoleon used the authority of his law to change the narrative of Venice by changing the physical structure of the city.

Even though Napoleon erased centuries of history to build them, I did really like the parks in this part of the city. We walked through the parks and we found a really strange statue surrounded by a moat filled with turtles, and then we found a playground. This was the first playground I’ve seen in Venice.

When we were done playing on the playground, we found our tower and then met up with another group to take a gondola ride. Then we met the rest of the group for our last dinner together in Italy. I’m going to miss being in Italy, but a part of me is excited to sleep in my own bed again. I’ve had so much fun this week, and I’m really glad I had the opportunity to visit Italy.

Source

White, Hayden. The Content of the Form. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

Day 6

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Today we took a train from Florence to Milan. Our train was delayed, so we arrived in Milan later than expected and had to miss going to the Ambrosiana and seeing da Vinci’s sketches. However, we did arrive in time for lunch, which was fantastic.

Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna

Self Portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola

After lunch, we visited an art museum called Pinacoteca di Brera. I saw a couple of pieces we discussed in class, including Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna. My favorite piece was Sofonisba Anguissola’s self portrait. She was one of the few women painters during the Renaissance to be recognized internationally. It’s really inspiring to see that a woman could have a successful career despite living in a time when women were considered property.

The Pinacoteca di Brera has a painting restoration room that can be viewed by the public, so I watched someone restore a painting. I think he was cleaning it because it looked like he was applying the same thing to the whole painting and he wasn’t being terribly careful about it. I knew old paintings had to be restored so they continue to last, but it was really cool to watch it happen. The restoration room is set up like a lab. Everything looks very clean, and the man restoring the painting was wearing gloves and a lab coat. It was really cool to see science and art come together.

Duomo

Because our train arrived late and we missed the Ambrosiana, where some of da Vinci’s sketches are housed, we got to choose if we wanted to visit the Duomo or the Ambrosiana after our exam. I chose to visit the Duomo because we passed it on our way to lunch and it looked really interesting. This was the wrong decision. We were told it would be a short wait, and it was cold and raining the entire time we waited. We were in line so long that we had to leave before we got in so we didn’t miss our train. I’m pretty disappointed that I didn’t get to go inside the Duomo or see da Vinci’s notebooks.

I spent a lot of time on trains today, which reminds me of Foucault’s essay on heterotopias. “A train is an extraordinary bundle of relations because it is something through which one goes, it is also something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then it is also something that goes by” (Foucault, p. 24). While on a train, I normally only think of it as something that takes me from one location to the next. I don’t think about how it is just something that briefly passes by to those outside of the train. If I get out of my seat, I very quickly remember that I am moving within something that is also moving because I have terrible balance and I’m always terrified that I’m going to fall into someone else’s lap. I experienced another interesting relationship between different heterotopias that Foucault didn’t account for. While I was on the train, I worked on my blog posts about Venice; while I was in a heterotopia, I was thinking and writing about another heterotopia.

I had a fantastic lunch, and I got to visit a really cool art museum today. Unfortunately I missed seeing da Vinci’s sketchbooks because I chose to wait in line for the Duomo. I didn’t get to spend much time in Milan, but it seemed like an interesting city. If I ever get to go back to Italy, I’ll try to spend some more time there.

Sources

Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, 1986, pp. 22–27. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/464648.

Day 5

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

View from Dome of Duomo

I spent the day in Florence, where the class met with Larry Bowne, an architect. I was excited to see the architecture in Italy, so I really enjoyed having an architect narrating the history and giving us information about some of the science behind the construction.

The first building we visited was the Duomo, which is a massive church. It’s a very tall building, and we got to climb the stairs all the way to the top of the dome, which is its highest point. It’s crazy to imagine that people built the dome by hauling materials up that high and that they climbed those stairs at least once every day.

Duomo

Most buildings in Italy took a very long time to complete because their construction began before the architects knew how they were going to finish them. The people building them just assumed that they would solve the problem eventually, so they started construction. The dome of the Duomo wasn’t built until after the rest of the building was constructed because no one knew how to build a dome that large. Eventually the problem was solved by building a higher, more pointed dome that put more stress in the downward direction instead of in the outward direction. I can’t imagine undertaking such a large project without knowing how to finish it.

Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana

After the Duomo, we went to Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, a library designed by Michelangelo. Michelangelo focused a lot on masculinity, so the architecture is very imposing and everything is oversized. The rooms are very large with high ceilings and impressive detailing, and there are lots of skulls on the ceiling and floor. Michelangelo’s architecture is the Renaissance version of a man cave.

New Sacristy

After the library we went to the New Sacristy in Medici Chapel, which was also designed by Michelangelo. Once again, we saw his focus on masculinity, but this time we saw it in his sculptures in addition to his architecture. The sculptures are very muscular; one of them looks like a man with breasts added as an afterthought.

The Adoration of the Magi
by Leonardo da Vinci

The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci

The first half of the day was dedicated to architecture, and the rest of the day was dedicated to art. The class visited the Uffizi, which is another art museum. This museum is massive. It took several hours to get through the whole building. The Uffizi had the most impressive art that I’ve seen so far. I got to see some of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings in person, including The Adoration of the Magi and The Annunciation. It was incredible to see them in real life. “Infinity is implied - or, rather, visually symbolized - by the fact that any set of objectively parallel lines, regardless of location and direction, converges towards one single “vanishing point”…” (Panofsky, p. 126). The Adoration of the Magi is an excellent example of the perspective Panofsky refers to; the staircases in the background clearly lead to a vanishing point. I learned about perspective when I took art in middle school, so it was really amazing to see one of the paintings that so clearly exemplifies perspective.

A Rabbi by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

At the museum, I saw many paintings by other famous artists as well. I was pretty impressed by the Rembrandt paintings because I’ve heard about Rembrandt almost as much as da Vinci. It was a strange feeling to walk into a room and realize that I’ve seen some of the paintings before now, but I got that feeling multiple times at the Uffizi.

David by Michelangelo 

After the Uffizi, I went to the Ponte Vecchio, which is a bridge in Florence with shops on it that crosses a river. It’s a lot like the Rialto in Venice. After that, I went to the Accademia museum to see Michelangelo’s David. Like Michelangelo’s architecture, David was very tall, muscular, and intimidating.

Today I got to see work done by Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt in person. It was kind of surreal to see their work in real life. I’ve seen it so many times in pictures that it was exactly what I thought it would look like, but I could see the art that they had actually worked on themselves, which was a really amazing experience.

Source

Panofsky, Erwin. Renaissance and Renaissances in Western Art. Routledge, 1972.

Day 4

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Madonna of the Red Cherubs
by Giovanni Bellini

After lunch, the class spent the afternoon in Venice at the Accademia, an art museum. The museum had lots of Byzantine and Renaissance artwork, including Madonna of the Red Cherubs by Giovanni Bellini and The Tempest by Giorgione, which are two Renaissance pieces we discussed in class.

The Tempest by Giorgione

Polittico Lion con l’Annunciazione by Lorenzo Veneziano is a really good example of Byzantine art. The entire painting is dripping with anagogic space. The folds in the clothes help make the painting slightly more realistic, but the figures are still two dimensional and they don’t have realistic expressions. The painting is so large that I couldn’t get a full picture of it, so the picture shown is only part of the painting.

Polittico Lion con l'Annunciazione by Lorenzo Veneziano

Trittico della Nativita
by Jacopo, Gentile, and Giovanni Bellini

The transition from Byzantine to Renaissance is shown by Trittico della Natività by Jacopo, Gentile, and Giovanni Bellini. The top, left, and right panels all have Byzantine gold backgrounds, but in the middle panel there is a scene behind the subjects of the painting. The artists keep the halos and paint angels in the sky, so they still create some anagogic space, but it is much less than on the other panels. The middle panel looks almost out of place compared to the other three because of the contrast between the backgrounds.

Madonna col Bambino by Tiziano Vecellio

Because religion was so important before and during the Renaissance, many of the paintings in the Accademia were of the Madonna and Child. A lot of them are very similar; some of them are even a little uncomfortable because some artists couldn’t paint realistic children. My favorite Madonna and Child is by Tiziano Vecellio. There’s no anagogic space, which is a nice change, and it’s just Mary and Jesus. Mary looks like a mother in the painting instead of someone uncomfortably holding a baby, and Jesus looks like a child instead of a small adult.

Polittico dell'Apocalisse by Jacobello Alberegno

Byzantine art is obviously much less realistic than Renaissance art, but it isn’t because Byzantine artists tried and failed to create realistic pieces. “[James] studies how Byzantines reacted to color, concluding that their perceptions were fundamentally different from ours. Like ancient authors, Byzantine writers emphasized saturation and especially brightness, as opposed to the modern appreciation of hue” (Nelson, p. 146). The way of thinking was so different before the Renaissance that realism wasn’t desired. People looked for symbolism and bold eye-catching art, not art that reflected their lives. Byzantine art makes a lot more sense when seen through this lens; it may occasionally seem a little creepy to modern viewers, but it effectively communicates its intended message.

After we finished at the Academia, the class got on a train to Florence. On the train, I could sometimes see cars driving near the tracks. I didn’t realize that I missed them while I was in Venice, but it was strangely comforting to see a car.

When the class arrived in Florence we had the evening to ourselves, so I went with a group to find dinner. It was interesting to see the differences in transportation between Florence and Venice, which are both two very old cities. Florence and Venice have dealt with their historical layout differently because the layouts themselves are very different. There aren’t canals in Florence, so there aren’t any boats or vaporettos. The streets in Florence are wider than in Venice, which makes it possible to have cars, but there isn’t much room left for pedestrians. Walking around Florence is kind of challenging. The roads are really narrow, there aren’t real sidewalks, and the drivers act like pedestrians do not have the right of way. Some streets are closed to vehicular traffic, so that was similar to Venice, but overall Florence seems like a very different city.

Sources

Nelson, Robert. Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Day 3

Monday, March 12, 2018

Today most of the class gave presentations about da Vinci’s inventions at the Leonardo Museum. As an engineer, I enjoyed hearing the presentations and learning some of the science behind his ideas. It’s amazing that he was able to come up with so many valid designs. In his notebooks, da Vinci wrote, “The senses are of the earth; reason stands apart from them in contemplation” (Da Vinci, p. 7). This is the approach da Vinci took to science; he tried to separate his emotions from his work, which helped him become a great scientist and inventor.

Da Vinci lived in a time where there were frequent wars between city states, so it was necessary for him to invent more effective tools for waging war. He understood that “without the violence of speed, that of weapons would not be so fearsome” (Virilio, p. 153). Da Vinci designed weapons that were faster, like his preliminary design for the modern machine gun, which allows more rounds to be fired in a short amount of time. He also designed an arched bridge that could quickly be assembled using surrounding materials, which would allow armies to cross rivers much more quickly.

In addition to his designs for war, Leonardo designed many flying machines, including preliminary designs for the helicopter and parachute. Some of his designs are too impractical to work at all, such as his ornithopter. Some of his flying machines almost work, but their flaws are too significant to be overlooked. For example, the helicopter prototype was in the air for a very short amount of time before the man pedaling got tired, and the parachute prototype was too heavy to be worn all the way to the ground.

Madonna with Child, Saints, and Doge by Paolo Veneziano

After the Leonardo Museum, the class visited Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. The art in this church is interesting because it shows the progression from Byzantine art to Renaissance art, which we learned about in class. Three paintings from the church clearly show the transition from Byzantine to Renaissance art.

The Assumption by Tiziano Vecellio

Madonna with Child, Saints, and Doge by Paolo Veneziano is an example of Byzantine art, which focused on symbolism instead of realism. Gold backgrounds and halos were commonly used to communicate to viewers that the figures in the painting are of religious significance. The figures in Byzantine paintings are two dimensional and don’t look realistic. Renaissance paintings focused on realism. Artists made figures look three dimensional instead of flat and gave their subjects realistic facial expressions, which can be seen in The Assumption by Tiziano Vecellio. Vecellio’s painting is so realistic that some of the figures even look like they are moving. This painting is more advanced than the Byzantine painting, but Vecellio gives a nod to the previous style by adding a gold background behind Mary to create anagogic space.

Madonna with Child and Saints by Giovanni Bellini

Madonna with Child and Saints by Giovanni Bellini shows the transition period between Byzantine and Renaissance. Bellini’s figures have more realistic facial expressions, but the painting looks two dimensional. He tries to curve the wall behind Mary, but the wall still looks flat. He also tries to make Mary look three dimensional; her knee looks like it comes out of the painting, but the other figures are two dimensional. Bellini experimented with dimension and perspective in an attempt at realism, but he didn’t quite accomplish it in this painting.

Sources

Bellini, Giovanni. “Madonna with Child and Saints.” Basilica Dei Frari, www.basilicadeifrari.it/en/opere/madonna-con-bambino-e-santi/

Da Vinci, Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks. Oxford University Press, 1952.

Vecellio, Tiziano. “The Assumption.” Basilica Dei Frari, www.basilicadeifrari.it/en/opere/assunta/

Veneziano, Paolo. “Madonna with Child, Saints, and Doge.” Basilica Dei Frari, www.basilicadeifrari.it/en/opere/madonna-con-bambino-san-francesco-e-santa-elisabetta-presentano-il-doge-e-la-dogaressa/

Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. Semiotext, 1977.

Day 2

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Doge's Palace Courtyard

The class started the day in Venice by touring the Doge’s Palace and the dungeons. The palace is very impressive; most of the ceilings and walls are covered in Renaissance paintings and gold detailing. Because trials were held in the palace, it is connected to the dungeons by the Bridge of Sighs. There isn’t much transition between the palace and the dungeons. One moment I was in a palace, and the next moment I was in a completely enclosed, cramped bridge, and then in the dungeons. Each cell in the dungeon is a bare stone room large enough to hold multiple prisoners. It’s strange to think that the Doge lived so close to the prisoners and in such different conditions.

French Architecture in Correr

After the tour of the Doge’s Palace, my group visited the Correr, the clock tower, and then the Basilica. The Correr is a museum of Italian history housed in a French palace. When Napoleon conquered Venice and ended the final Doge’s reign, he built himself a palace modeled after French architecture, which he was unable to use after he was defeated by the British. Just as Napoleon seized control of their city, Venetians seized control of their narrative. “And this raises the suspicion that narrative in general... has to do with the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally, authority” (White, p. 13). When Napoleon had authority, he controlled the narrative by building himself a grand palace. Once the Venetians regained authority, they turned a symbol of France’s grandeur into a narrator of Italian history.

After finishing at the Correr, the group toured the clock tower. Venice was very powerful during the Renaissance because their navy allowed them to control trade and defend the city. “Mastery over the sea demands that over Time” (Virilio, p. 68). In order to become good sailors and navigators, it was necessary for Venetians to accurately keep track of time, which is why they have such an impressive clock tower.

Basilica di San Marco

The last tour of the day was of the Basilica di San Marco. The church is huge, with massive vaulted ceilings covered in gold mosaics. The church is old enough that the mosaics on the ceiling are Byzantine, which means that they focus more on symbolism than trying to represent reality. The ceilings are covered in gold because gold represents anagogic space, which is used to show that the figures in the murals are holy.

The last official activity today was a Vivaldi concert at San Vidal Church. I really appreciated how complex the music was. Before the Renaissance, Gregorian chant was the only kind of music. I can’t imagine the transition from the simplicity of Gregorian chant to the complexity of music like that composed by Vivaldi.

Because Gregorian chant was so simple, many churches weren’t designed with acoustics desirable for complex performance. In Sound and Space, Howard and Moretti study the resonance and clarity of different concert venues. They found that many old churches have vaulted ceilings that create too much resonance for complex compositions. Although many older concert venues don’t have proper acoustics, spaces can be temporarily modified to improve sound quality. For example, “the hanging of tapestries could have improved the acoustics” (Howard and Moretti, p. 201). I noticed some tapestries hanging on the columns in the church. They could have been hung in order to improve the acoustics for the concert.

Acqua Alta

Although I enjoyed the concert, getting there was challenging because of the Acqua Alta. Sometimes the high tide in Venice is higher than normal, so parts of the city flood as the tide comes in. I didn’t think there would be standing water as early as there was, so I had to put on my plastic shoe covers in the rain while I was on my way to the church. After the concert when it had stopped raining the Acqua Alta was kind of enjoyable. The class waded through the water in Piazza San Marco, which is one of the lowest points in Venice. It was a unique cultural experience; most cities don’t experience regular flooding.

I really enjoyed touring the Doge’s palace, Correr, Clock Tower, and Basilica and seeing how Venetians use narrative to tell their history. I enjoyed the Vivaldi concert and gaining a better understanding of the complexity that the Renaissance contributed to music, and I’m glad I got to experience something as unique as an Acqua Alta.

Sources

Howard, Deborah, and Laura Moretti. Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice. Yale University Press, 2009.

Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. Semiotext, 1977.

White, Hayden. The Content of the Form. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.